An official handbook, issued by the General Conference, dealing with matters of local church organization, services, and operation, church officers, church membership, standards of conduct, and relationships of the church to conference officers, and workers. The Church Manual is to be distinguished from the Manual for Ministers .
The first serious attempt at a church manual was made in 1882, when a committee consisting of W. H. Littlejohn, J. O. Corliss, and H. A. St. John was appointed by the General Conference to prepare a church manual, to be printed first serially for discussion and criticism (13 articles came out in the Review and Herald from June 5 to Aug. 28, 1883). It covered such matters as the organizing of churches; the duties of church officers; the admission, transferring, and dropping of members; church trials; and the conducting of quarterly business meetings and the ordinances. However, the next General Conference, in November 1883, decided against publishing a church manual because it was deemed to be undesirable to take any step that could be construed as leading to a creed or discipline other than the Bible, or toward formalism. G. I. Butler, president of the General Conference, explained the action taken, in an article in the Review and Herald (60:745, Nov. 27, 1883).
In subsequent years a number of books or pamphlets were published by different writers on the work of the church and the duties of church officers, the most important being J. N. Loughborough’s The Church, Its Organization, Order and Discipline (1907), a personal undertaking, but long considered the standard manual on church order. It was not until 1932 that an official Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual appeared, issued by the General Conference.
Revisions in the Manual were made in 1934 and 1940 to keep the contents in step with the developments of the world work. An extensive revision was made in 1951. Concerning this, the preface to the 1951 edition states: “There are two reasons why a new revision of the manual is now being issued. One is that actions taken in the General Conference sessions of 1946 and of 1950 have made necessary some very significant changes in what was contained in previous editions of the manual. Another reason is that our work has grown so remarkably in various parts of the world, and is meeting problems peculiar to certain areas, that it was felt necessary to have a general church manual setting forth basic matters of denominational policy and practice, with certain details of local application left to the division committees to decide and to present to their workers in written form. The General Conference Committee, therefore, in its Autumn Council held at Denver, Colorado, October 18–27, 1948, authorized a complete revision of the Church Manual , and in doing so provided that each division of the General Conference might publish a supplement to it. The action was as follows:
“‘That this new Church Manual be the manual for the world field, and that the divisions take in hand the matter of making it available in the languages of their respective language areas.
“‘That each division, including the North American Division[,] of the world field prepare a “Supplement” to the new Church Manual , not in any way modifying it, but containing such additional matter as is applicable to the conditions and circumstances prevailing in the division; the manuscripts of these “Supplements” to be submitted to the General Conference Committee for endorsement before being printed ( Autumn Council Actions [1948], p. 1187).’
“This revision has been prepared by a body of men appointed by the General Conference Committee. The members of this special committee have had access to correspondence from the field and also to the latest developments in our denominational policies. These materials, together with what has been previously published, have been classified, and appear in the present volume. The contents of this manual deal with general matters of policy pertaining to church government. Details of application, as they might vary in the different divisions of our work, have been left to the handling of the division committees through supplements in accordance with the General Conference action cited” ( pp. 19, 20).
The 1946 General Conference session took action that all changes and revisions of the Church Manual must be authorized by the General Conference in session. The 1963 edition incorporated all revisions and additions through the 1962 General Conference session. The revisions voted by the 1970 General Conference session were incorporated in the 1972 edition of the Church Manual . At the 1975 General Conference session in Vienna, Austria, further and numerous revisions covering the entire Church Manual were approved. Many of these were purely verbal changes made in the interests of style and lucidity. Others, though important in clarifying and enlarging certain areas, cannot be said to have constituted a basic revision of the Manual . They are incorporated in the 1976 edition of the Church Manual .
The 1980 General Conference session took action to make an in-depth editorial revision of the 27 fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Prior to the action at the session there was a wide participation and input from the Church Manual Committee, the Administrative Committee of the General Conference, an ad hoc committee, all the divisions of the world, the Annual Council of the General Conference, and an editing committee appointed by the session to make recommendations for the final decision of the GC session. Changes were mostly in the way the beliefs were expressed, not in their content.
Probably the most important action regarding the Church Manual at the 1985 General Conference session was related to the organization of the church. This defined four constituent levels in the organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—local church, local conference or local field/mission, union conference or union field/mission, and the General Conference. Divisions are not constituent levels, but are sections of the General Conference with administrative responsibility assigned for a particular geographical area of the world. Other small revisions or amendments affected funds of the local church and conference/missions, Sabbath schools, Home and School Association, Health and Temperance Department, and administration of the local church. On this last item, conference officers were given the right to attend business meetings of local churches, and conference presidents to attend local church board meetings.
The 1990 General Conference session incorporated a new section establishing the proper procedure to make amendments or revisions in the Church Manual . Suggested revisions should be submitted to the General Conference Church Manual Committee through constituent levels of the church. The level on which the amendment originates will give study and consideration to it and, if approved, will send it to the next constituent level for wider study and counsel. If the amendment is approved, the suggested revisions are submitted to the next level for further evaluation. The Church Manual Committee will consider all recommended amendments or revisions and, if approved, will prepare them for presentation to the Annual Council and to the General Conference in session, which is the only body with authority to make any changes in the Church Manual . Other amendments include a rewriting of the baptismal vow to update the language, a definition that local elders can be ordained only by an ordained minister with credentials “from the local conference,” an exception allowing licensed or commissioned ministers ordained as local elders to perform marriage ceremonies in divisions in which their administrative committees have approved it, and a rewriting of the section on the Communion service to make its content more easily understood, in a more comprehensive way.